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I literally have a checkered past. My ancestors include African slaves and Native Americans, as well as members of America's most prominent colonial and antebellum-era families. That's why America's history is very personal to me. My family surnames: Birdsong, Bowie, Brayboy, Bryant, Gilbert, Gines, Johnson, LeJay, Long, Manson, Sanford

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Page 161

So I've been tagged by Chery at Nordic Blue for the "161" meme. In this meme, one dislcoses the contents of the sixth sentence on page 161 of one's current read. I've read a lot lately, but when the tag came in, I was in the midst of Dudley Taylor Cornish's The Sable Arm, which tells the story of black troops in the Civil War. This 1956 work was perhaps the first serious scholarly work devoted to this topic and as one reviewer said, it's "readable, interesting, sound, with interesting insights."

My great-great-grandfather, Zeke Johnson, served from 1864 to 1866 in Company D, 18th United States Colored Troops.

The prospect of Negro troops, while not overwhelmingly popular in the North at first, provoked outrage and fear of slave rebellions in the South.

Page 161, sixth sentence:

"I shall," he [Jefferson Davis] told his Congress, "unless in your wisdom you deem some other course more expedient, deliver to the several [Confederate] State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces . . . that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those [Confederate] States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection."